Pages

This is a Job for Nyquil

I've been thinking about the weird dream I had this morning for most of the day. Ya'll know I hate snakes more than just about anything in the world and I can't even fathom repeatedly picking one up as I did in the dream. I get in the same room with one and I start sweating and breaking out in hives. In the dream, I didn't want to handle it, but "something" kept telling me I had to. In a way, I suppose, I was being forced to face my worst fears, which I did.

When I went grocery shopping yesterday, as I passed the road to Mamaw's house, I thought about her and the house she lived in when I was little. The porch was concrete, but painted a dark green color and it was always cool to the touch regardless of how hot it may have been outside. I haven't been back there in about thirty years, but I can still remember the cracks in the sidewalk leading up to the steps, the yucca plants on the edge of the yard and the branch that ran down the middle of the property.

It wasn't until I left the store and headed home, past the road to the cemetery where Mamaw is buried beside Papaw, that I lost it. I remembered her funeral, how my aunt was so shocked to see me walk in and the fear I had of facing my father after all those years. I had thought, before she died, that I'd never be able to do it, that I'd never be strong enough to face him.

But I did. I faced him.

And now I wonder if those thoughts as I drove home from the grocery store yesterday had anything to do with handling the snake in my dream. Maybe on some level, the powers of the universe were trying to show me that I'm capable of doing a lot more than I give myself credit for.

And maybe it was just a dream....

On a slightly different, way weirder note.. I relayed the details of my snake dream this morning to Lulu and she said, "That's odd that you dreamed about snakes last night. Last night I dreamed a huge, yellow snake was waiting for me, it's mouth gaping so wide it could have swallowed my head."

We had both had dreams of big yellow snakes. That was weird enough, but then I came home for lunch. I went in Ma's room to find Sammy to give him his pill and Ma said this to me, "I must have had your dreams last night."

I know I must have looked dumbstruck. "Every time I closed my eyes I dreamed snakes were all over me. It's the strangest thing, I used to have dreams like that all the time, but this is the first time I've dreamed about snakes since we moved here."

Isn't that just.. WEIRD??????

I tried to figure out what it could mean, but all I could come up with on Google was some weird Greek cult that had temples in places with hot mineral baths and big yellow snakes as the symbol for the god they worshiped. If ya'll can come up with anything else, I'd love to hear it.

Now I'm going to go try to find something to get the slithery things out of my head before bedtime.